Technical Architect

On behalf of DWP we are looking for a Technical Architect for a 12 month (Inside IR35) contract. Hybrid working with 3 days per week required in either Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Birmingham, Blackpool or Newcastle.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is responsible for welfare, pensions, and child maintenance policy. As the UK's biggest public service department, it administers the State Pension and a range of working age, disability and ill health benefits to around 20 million claimants and customers. As such, we operate on a scale that is almost unmatched anywhere in Europe and most people in Britain come into contact with us at some point in their lives.

The Care Service programme is a strategic transformation initiative aimed at simplifying and unifying benefit-related services into a single, user-centred model. It operates within a complex ecosystem of Legacy systems, evolving policy frameworks, and cross-cutting digital platforms such as Customer Account and Colleague View.

Architects are critical to this transformation, ensuring that technical solutions are scalable, secure, and aligned with both user needs and policy intent.

Our initial focus will be around the operational source system of the Care Service:

. The data model to support the service.
. Understanding data quality standards that need to be applied.
. Creating a metadata capability.

Answering questions such as:

How can we interface with Legacy untrusted data?
How can we minimise the manual processing of data and impact on agents?
How can we verify information via other government departments and third parties?
Ensuring we have trusted, accessible data that is furnished with metadata so that it is more automatically reusable, and where decisions could be made upon the data.
Ensuring data can support potential AI initiatives
Creating architectures to support rapidly testing the core risks and assumptions of the service
Creating architectures and associated work product to support the overall service and governance processes
Defining the capabilities required to support the service, and associated technology options

As a Technical Architect you will work on:

Application architecture.
Integration architecture (DWP services, third parties).
Security architecture (compliance, encryption).
Infrastructure architecture (AWS hosting design).
Governance decks and processes.

Essential:

. Strong Technical Architecture experience, ideally within the Public Sector.
. AWS knowledge and experience.
. Ability to understand business objectives and have the ability to make technical designs to support those objectives.
. Ability to work in a multidisciplinary team.
. Strong communication skills.

Please be aware that this role can only be worked within the UK and not Overseas.

Disability Confident

As a member of the Disability Confident Scheme, DWP guarantees to interview all candidates who have a disability and who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of candidates who have a disability who meet all the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group. This scheme encourages candidates with a disability and/or neurodivergence to apply. In exceptional circumstances, we may also need to apply the desirable criteria in our shortlisting process which may include holding active security clearance.

Armed Forces Covenant

DWP guarantees to interview veterans or spouses/partners of military personnel who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of ex-military candidates/military spouses or partners, who meet all of the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group. In exceptional circumstances, we may also need to apply the desirable criteria in our shortlisting process which may include holding active security clearance.

In applying for this role, you acknowledge the following "this role falls in scope of the Off Payroll Working in the Public Sector legislation. Any rates of payment quoted will reflect the gross rate per day for the assignment and will be subject to appropriate taxes and statutory costs. As such the payment to the intermediary and your income resulting from this contract will be different".